If you get an offer for airfare and hotel in Dublin that sounds too good to be true, it ain't necessarily so! Our 4-day-deal-of-a-trip last week was fantastic. We flew from JFK overnight and arrived at Dublin the morning of Nov. 11. Our hotel was the new, Euro-mod 4 & 1/2 star Mauldron hotel, in a developing neighborhood of southeast Dublin, just off the Liffey (Dublin's central river) beside the Grand Canal.
As we walked along the Quays that line the Liffey, we were struck by a bleach-white suspension bridge spanning the river near our destination. The cables connecting to the arch form half a rib-cage, an association reinforced by the blanched-bone whiteness of the structure, but the obvious association must be with one of Ireland's primary symbols, the harp. I guessed this bridge was a Calatrava design, and upon returning home and googling it, found that not only was my hunch correct but the bridge is named after my favorite Irish author, Samuel Beckett. Life is as poetic as one wants it to be.
Anyway, the Samuel Beckett bridge is still being installed, and like this entire corner of Dublin, is in the middle of a gestative birthing process. But the ubiquitous construction in the neighborhood & the added 5' of walk time to the City Centre in no way detracted from our appreciation and enjoyment of one of the world's greatest cities.
After checking in to our spacious and comfortable room (the friendly staff offered us an upgrade since we weren't able to check in as early as we'd requested!) we set out to explore. I'd been to Dublin in 2001 with the Shepherd College Chamber Singers, and loved it. But being a quick choir tour, I did not have nearly enough time to see & appreciate all Dublin has to offer.
My earlier visit, for example, did not offer an opportunity to explore Dublin's rich literary history, and the requisite pub crawl itinerant with it. So our first destination was to be the most literary of pubs, Davy Byrnes, central to James Joyce's Ulysses, and home to the annual celebration of Joyce and his dense, modernist masterpiece.
One of Dublin's legends is that if the city were ever destroyed, all you'd need to reconstruct it would be Ulysses. I won't try to "explain" Joyce, nor is this book easily (if at all) summarized. But on one level, the novel is a day in the life of a city and its inhabitants, telescoping Homer's epic adventure, the Odyssey, into the goings-on and affairs of a handful of everyday, working-class Dubliners, with the central character being the ad-man, Leopold Bloom.
Bloomsday, named after that narrator (if not hero) of Joyce's sui generis version of Homer is celebrated annually on the day Joyce's "narrative" occurs, June 16. Among other Joycean activities the Dubliners recreate are Bloom's fare at Davy Byrne's, a cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine.
Here's a literal (and figurative!) taste of the aforementioned passage from Joyce (which of course I am currently reading):
"Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink, and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese.
--Have you a cheese sandwich?
--Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy, take away that. Lubricate..."
In that nutshell of a window are contained many of the joys and challenges of making sense of Joyce and his polyphonic web of allusions. One of the chapters is based on an 8-voice fugue, in fact, and Joyce was a devotee of classical music, a lover of Schubert in particular, and an amateur pianist.
Joyce's elder colleague, William Butler Yeats, started out as a painter, in the mould of his father, John B. Yeats. W.B. Yeats' younger brother, Jack, was a great painter, and it was a wing devoted to his works in the National Gallery of Ireland that sidetracked our visit to Davy Byrnes.
The National Gallery ranked further down on my shortlist of museum visits (Trinity Library and the Book of Kells, the Dublin City Gallery and the Writers' Museum were atop the list) but I am so glad we acted on the spontaneous impulse to stop in and visit.
The National Gallery is not as large a museum as its name would imply. Room for room, however, it is an impressive one. The central work of not only the collection's main room but of the entire collection itself is Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ." The chiaroscuro shadings are among the artist's trademarks, and the vivid images that emerge from so many shadows one of the pleasurable oxymorons of the style--etched detail amidst pervading darkness. This exquisitely crafted composition is characteristically dark, and centered on the awkward embrace of Christ by his mutinous disciple, Judas. The scene has a disturbing and unsettling quality because of the undercurrent of violence vis-a-vis the embrace (and its foreshadowing of Christ's imminent fate). The affect is underscored by the latent sexuality of the scene. Judas' physical grasp is obviously an unwanted advance, and this fact is reinforced by Christ's deferential, downward turned glance, his interlaced fingers crossed passively in front of his submissive frame. Caravaggio has transposed a trope of archetypal roles--masculine/feminine, aggressive/passive, violator/victim--in this masterpiece.
Jack Yeats is one of those artists I know more by reference than experience. Amy and I were both grateful to have the experience of spending time in the triptych of rooms that make up the Yeats Museum wing of the National Gallery. His blend of early twentieth century styles--post impressionism & expressionism, with a nod towards the latter's abstract cousins--make for a series of canvases that are vivid and engaging. I was particularly struck by a pair of paintings from the mid 30's (Yeats lived from 1871-1957) whose deeply rich reds were portentous in their contexts.
"About to write a letter" centers on a gothic, almost vampire-like figure, whose pale face amidst a red-dominated room reminds one of blood. What kind of letter is this creature about to write?!? "Morning in a City" invites similar questions, as the bold-red base of the canvas conjures apocalyptic associations. Such associations, if less vivid and richly drawn as far as color is concerned, linger in his late and more abstract work, "Grief." Here, barely distinguishable figures populate a canvas that feels more barren for its palette of pale blues, greens, and grey.
Another harrowing apocalypse is Bosch's purgatorial depiction of "The Descent into Limbo." 400 years younger than Yeats, its background featuring a burning furnace is an eery (if apt) evocation of post-industrialist society, and the horrors witnessed in the centuries since Bosch's visionary work.
The Gallery also holds one of El Greco's strikingly modern portraits, that of "St Francis receiving the stigmata." If one didn't recognize the name or style of this Spanish iconoclast, one could be forgiven for thinking him a pre-cursor to Dali and modernism, and placing this 16th century painter closer to the 20th!
Other highlights of the Renaissance and surrounding schools include an exquisitely balanced Vermeer, and the always visually surprising & visceral canvases of Brueghel and Cranach.
Though modest in size, the Impressionist & early 20th century rooms are a veritable catalogue of names and representative works. At one end, romantic works that influence the modernists prepare the way. Corot and Delacroix are represented, and the latter's "Demosthenes on the Seashore" a masterpiece in and of itself.
Single paintings by Monet, Signac, Picasso, Modigliani, and a pair by Bonnard, complete the impressive collection of Ireland's National Gallery that I will certainly revisit on the next trip to Dublin.
I would also revisit Davy Byrnes, and not just to relive our own personal Bloomsday. Located on Duke Street, just off the central hub-bub of Grafton street, directly south of Trinity College, the pub pours a great pint of plain (Guinness) and has scrumptious Bangers [sausages] 'n Mash [potatoes]. This Irish staple, like the accompanying Dublin-based stout, is simply not the same outside of Ireland. The herb-seasoned sausages and Guinness-based gravy make the dish better than average pub grub. Dublin--and Ireland in general--gets a bad rap for being culinarily boring. Whatever.
As is our want when traveling, we followed our own path (with occasional reference to the guidebooks) and made our own literary pub crawl. Amy had the best Irish coffee at the Blarney Inn, and I have to say the Lombard Inn on Pearse Street poured the best pint I had (the locations of both, if not the pubs themselves, feature in the Ulysses itinerary).
After stopping back at the hotel and the cool-if-uninspiring Vertigo Bar there, we stopped into a traditional Irish pub on the corner of Cardiff Lane and Sir John Rogerson's Quay, the Ferryman. Though this pub isn't mentioned in Joyce's book, the literary and mythological associations were too ripe. Charon is the mythological ferryman who rows the departed across the river Styx to the underworld, Hades. The fifth chapter of Ulysses is Joyce's analog to Homer's section on Hades. And I think Joyce and Beckett both would approve of the "coincidence" of the location of Beckett's bridge to this particular pub (Dublin has the distinction of being one of the only places in the world to boast two bridges by Santiago Calatrava, and her first such bridge was none other than the James Joyce!)
Anyway, the Ferryman's location just next to the hotel (and the aforementioned associations) was too serendipitous to ignore. We ended our first day in Dublin with the pleasant surprise of sharing a few rounds with a couple of French businessmen who work the weekdays in Dublin. I loved my first experience in the city several years ago because of the balance of culture and history with the comfortable friendliness of the Dubliners themselves. This first day only affirmed that feeling, and augured well for the few days ahead.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
New wine in old skins...
"No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved." (Matthew 9:16-17).
Don't worry, this is not a sermon. The title of this musing, lifted from Matthew, is also the subheading of the 2nd half of the Virginia Chorale's upcoming Holiday Concerts, Sweet was the Song. I will write about that program and post the program notes shortly.
Music is one discipline where new wine does more than merely fit in old skins. The alchemy of such pairing yields richly imaginative originals, invites comparison and connection, and adds layers of texture from which meaning is created and experienced.
One of my favorite past-times is sitting with my i-tunes library and creating playlists that pique my imagination at any given moment. (I have about 5,000 "songs" on my computer, grouped into about 60 playlists, only one of which is not classical. It is a list of about 70 songs, most of which are by the Beatles & Radiohead, for the record).
Last weekend, I was talking with one of my best friends, Steven White (artistic director of Opera Roanoke), about a gala-style concert program for the opera next season. We both had been thinking a lot about Faust (I mused on Gounod's Faust last month after a visit to Chicago--see "Romantic Triangles" below). Steven had put together a draft of a fantastic Faust program, drawing on excerpts from three of the great operatic settings of the legend--Gounod's Faust, Berlioz's Le Damnation de Faust and Boito's Mefistofele.
It happened to be Halloween, and with Faust and Mephistopheles on the brain, I decided it would be way-cool to create a "Scary Music!" list to play while the neighbors' kids trick-or-treated. As a spokesperson for the arts, a director, and an educator, one is always looking for another avenue to expose kids to classical music. I'm sure my Halloween playlist was lost on most of the kids and their parents, but I enjoyed it. Besides excerpts from the Faust adaptations, both those above and Liszt's Faust Symphony, Berlioz's "March to the Scaffold" and "Witches' Sabbath" from Symphonie Fantastique made the cut, as did the opening of Verdi's Macbeth, and Mäntyjärvi's Witches chorus, "Double, Double, Toil & Trouble" (which the Chorale is reprising this Sunday in concert). The third movement of Henze's guitar sonata devoted to Shakespearean characters is a musical portrait of Lady MacBeth, and the "Dies Irae" from his instrumental Requiem is harrowing, and makes "scary" horror-film music sound like cartoons. Ives' "Hallowe'en" was the opening track and James MacMillan's stirring elegy to a falsely accused witch, The Confessions of Isabel Gowdie, closed it.
It was MacMillan's motet, O bone Jesu, that prompted the present essay. MacMillan is a Scottish Roman Catholic composer and one of the most widely performed, admired, and acclaimed composers around. He is not more well-known in the US because our country is stupid. His music is challenging--the "Confessions" mentioned above opens with beautifully sighing string lines that eventually yield to jarring, percussive attacks, like the fall of an axe (or guillotine). This music does not shy away from depicting the violence of its subject, the martyrdom of a falsely accused "witch." And therein lies much of its power and relevance. But such relevance is challenging--in a variety of ways--and that is (partly) why such music is not as popular here in our commodity-driven, entertainment-addicted, attention-deficit-escapist "culture." But I am not as jaded or cynical as that statement would suggest. I just want people to turn off their tv's, turn away from video games for awhile, and spend TIME with truly meaningful art like MacMillan's music. I don't condemn "pop" culture per se. I commend art culture. Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" is an analagous work--one that depicts centuries-old events AND works as a contemporary allegory through the prismatic lens of the creative imagination. Such works offer a mirror through which the participant (both the performer AND the audience) not only has a better understanding of history, but of human nature and experience. It is such understanding that adds meaning and contributes to what philosophers and teachers of all ages have dubbed "the well-lived life." SO, maybe this is a sermon after all...
Anyway, soap-boxes aside, I just wanted to write a bit about some new music inspired by some of the old. Macmillan's "O bone Jesu" was inspired by his Scottish ancestor, the Renaissance composer, Robert Carver (c.1484-1567). Carver's 19-part motet features virtuosic textures and allusions to numerology (composers have always been attracted by the mystic qualities of numbers, and the marriage of science--acoustics, physics--and sound). MacMillan echoes Carver's 20 repetitions of the central word "Jesu" in a work that is characteristic of its composer--evocative, striking harmonies, independently moving vocal lines, adorned with the cries and sighs of Scottish folk song, all balanced in a canvas of colorful originality that is immediate & engaging. If you have never heard MacMillan's music, stop reading and go download this piece!
Or, if you want a perfect example of the "new wine in old skins," the old-and-new-together, check out Harry Christophers and the Sixteen's new recording of MacMillan and Purcell, "Bright Orb of Harmony." The Sixteen is one of the finest pro chamber choirs in Britain, and along with Stephen Layton's Polyphony, my favorite, "go-to" ensemble when I'm listening. Following the passions of their conductor, the ensemble specialises [sic!] in Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary music.
In 2000, the Sixteen began a Choral Pilgrimage to contribute to Britain's Millenium Celebrations. What a novel idea. Arts organizations leading nation-wide celebrations by touring their country. If the commonwealth of Virginia is listening, I volunteer the Chorale to bring the finest choral music into the schools and communities of our great state. Oh, right. You cut our funding. Sorry...
Anyway, their 2009 Pilgrimage celebrated the 350th birthday of Henry Purcell and the 50th of his latest musical offspring, James MacMillan, and the aforementioned recording is one of the fruits of that tour. The pairing could not be more apt & fit. Purcell's singular, expressive, harmonically-pungent writing captures the essence of the Psalms, Litanies, and Prophets he set. If Benjamin Britten was Purcell's 20th century heir, then that torch has been passed to MacMillan, who consistently responds with deeply felt, richly drawn, yet unaffected, immediately appealing music. In addition to the Carver-inspired motet, O Bone Jesu, two of MacMillan's Strathclyde Motets for communion are included (so-called for the University choir that commissioned them). One of MacMillan's most effective miniatures is the a cappella elegy, A Child's Prayer. This was the first work of MacMillan's I ever programmed, and simply stating that produces an intense itch to program it again. It was a response to the 1996 Dunblane tragedy in Scotland, where a gunman massacred some dozen schoolchildren. As it was one of the first mass-killings of its kind outside of the US, it shook Europe with acute force.
MacMillan's simple & haunting motet features two solo treble lines who weave an angelic & transcendent, chant-inspired duet over a dirge-like choral texture. As the annotator in this new cd observes "its musical no less than its theological consolation provides a sense of peace beyond the desolation." If that sounds esoteric or, on the other hand, unsubstantiated, it is worth quoting the composer himself, a devout Roman Catholic whose mostly religious music transcends both the singleness of its inspiration and the specificity of its subject(s):
"Even in our post-religious secular society, occasionally even the most agnostic and sceptically inclined music lovers will lapse into spiritual terminology to account for the impact of music in their lives. Many people still refer to music as the most spiritual of the arts."
I have been trying to get at why such music is "different." Not necessarily better (though I believe it is), but different, and significant, and worth the time and effort. And therein is another factor we can apply to my sermonette above about "pop" v. "art" culture and why the latter suffers in our country. Art requires participation--effort on behalf of the listener/observer/audience member. We've lost something in translation in our high-speed, hi-def world. And yet, amidst the latest version of Windows or the iphone or whatever, there is a renewed thirst for meaning, and a hunger for significance. I think there is also a revived interest in making connections and repairing gaps. And I believe music such as this may be just the think* to fill those voids. It's no surprise that many of the works on my newest playlist, "old and new" share that religious affinity upon which MacMillan remarks. Besides MacMillan & Purcell, I have Kile Smith's Vespers, another striking work--for chamber choir and Renaissance band (commissioned by Piffaro)--that looks backward for its source while sounding refreshingly original.
MacMillan's Roman lineage goes back to Monteverdi and the Catholicism of the Tudors (well, until Henry wanted a divorce, quite another digression). Kile looks to the Reformed tradition in a work that makes new wine of old Lutheran hymns. I hope the Chorale will be able to realize its dream of getting back to performing these masterworks, old and new. I'm planning on a Monteverdi Vespers for its 400th anniversary in 2010 (itself a study of old & new practices in a single work). Then I want to do Kile's Vespers. And then MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross paired with Buxtehude's passion-tide cantatas, Membra Jesu Nostri. The exciting young Brittish composer, Tarik O'Regan, has written a major work re-working the music of the medieval composer, Machaut, in his rousing Scattered Rhymes. Tarik's piece is not religious, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have those numinous and spiritual qualities that evoke such responses. I want to pair it with Machaut's seminal mass setting in honor of Notre Dame. A seven-hundred year-old work that is a specific product of a French Catholic still speaks in an ageless & relevant voice of the powers of the human imagination. There may be no one "universal" language. But music is a great second, and one that makes life more meaningful.
That's enough to keep me listening, making connections, musing, and sharing why, to paraphrase another modernist (Debussy, who looked back in order to move forward) "music is the best means of expression we have."
So this was a sermon, after all, Thank you for indulging me. Until next time.
*Neither I nor my spell-check caught this "mistake." Since its Freudian nature is rather apt, given the context, it stands.
Don't worry, this is not a sermon. The title of this musing, lifted from Matthew, is also the subheading of the 2nd half of the Virginia Chorale's upcoming Holiday Concerts, Sweet was the Song. I will write about that program and post the program notes shortly.
Music is one discipline where new wine does more than merely fit in old skins. The alchemy of such pairing yields richly imaginative originals, invites comparison and connection, and adds layers of texture from which meaning is created and experienced.
One of my favorite past-times is sitting with my i-tunes library and creating playlists that pique my imagination at any given moment. (I have about 5,000 "songs" on my computer, grouped into about 60 playlists, only one of which is not classical. It is a list of about 70 songs, most of which are by the Beatles & Radiohead, for the record).
Last weekend, I was talking with one of my best friends, Steven White (artistic director of Opera Roanoke), about a gala-style concert program for the opera next season. We both had been thinking a lot about Faust (I mused on Gounod's Faust last month after a visit to Chicago--see "Romantic Triangles" below). Steven had put together a draft of a fantastic Faust program, drawing on excerpts from three of the great operatic settings of the legend--Gounod's Faust, Berlioz's Le Damnation de Faust and Boito's Mefistofele.
It happened to be Halloween, and with Faust and Mephistopheles on the brain, I decided it would be way-cool to create a "Scary Music!" list to play while the neighbors' kids trick-or-treated. As a spokesperson for the arts, a director, and an educator, one is always looking for another avenue to expose kids to classical music. I'm sure my Halloween playlist was lost on most of the kids and their parents, but I enjoyed it. Besides excerpts from the Faust adaptations, both those above and Liszt's Faust Symphony, Berlioz's "March to the Scaffold" and "Witches' Sabbath" from Symphonie Fantastique made the cut, as did the opening of Verdi's Macbeth, and Mäntyjärvi's Witches chorus, "Double, Double, Toil & Trouble" (which the Chorale is reprising this Sunday in concert). The third movement of Henze's guitar sonata devoted to Shakespearean characters is a musical portrait of Lady MacBeth, and the "Dies Irae" from his instrumental Requiem is harrowing, and makes "scary" horror-film music sound like cartoons. Ives' "Hallowe'en" was the opening track and James MacMillan's stirring elegy to a falsely accused witch, The Confessions of Isabel Gowdie, closed it.
It was MacMillan's motet, O bone Jesu, that prompted the present essay. MacMillan is a Scottish Roman Catholic composer and one of the most widely performed, admired, and acclaimed composers around. He is not more well-known in the US because our country is stupid. His music is challenging--the "Confessions" mentioned above opens with beautifully sighing string lines that eventually yield to jarring, percussive attacks, like the fall of an axe (or guillotine). This music does not shy away from depicting the violence of its subject, the martyrdom of a falsely accused "witch." And therein lies much of its power and relevance. But such relevance is challenging--in a variety of ways--and that is (partly) why such music is not as popular here in our commodity-driven, entertainment-addicted, attention-deficit-escapist "culture." But I am not as jaded or cynical as that statement would suggest. I just want people to turn off their tv's, turn away from video games for awhile, and spend TIME with truly meaningful art like MacMillan's music. I don't condemn "pop" culture per se. I commend art culture. Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" is an analagous work--one that depicts centuries-old events AND works as a contemporary allegory through the prismatic lens of the creative imagination. Such works offer a mirror through which the participant (both the performer AND the audience) not only has a better understanding of history, but of human nature and experience. It is such understanding that adds meaning and contributes to what philosophers and teachers of all ages have dubbed "the well-lived life." SO, maybe this is a sermon after all...
Anyway, soap-boxes aside, I just wanted to write a bit about some new music inspired by some of the old. Macmillan's "O bone Jesu" was inspired by his Scottish ancestor, the Renaissance composer, Robert Carver (c.1484-1567). Carver's 19-part motet features virtuosic textures and allusions to numerology (composers have always been attracted by the mystic qualities of numbers, and the marriage of science--acoustics, physics--and sound). MacMillan echoes Carver's 20 repetitions of the central word "Jesu" in a work that is characteristic of its composer--evocative, striking harmonies, independently moving vocal lines, adorned with the cries and sighs of Scottish folk song, all balanced in a canvas of colorful originality that is immediate & engaging. If you have never heard MacMillan's music, stop reading and go download this piece!
Or, if you want a perfect example of the "new wine in old skins," the old-and-new-together, check out Harry Christophers and the Sixteen's new recording of MacMillan and Purcell, "Bright Orb of Harmony." The Sixteen is one of the finest pro chamber choirs in Britain, and along with Stephen Layton's Polyphony, my favorite, "go-to" ensemble when I'm listening. Following the passions of their conductor, the ensemble specialises [sic!] in Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary music.
In 2000, the Sixteen began a Choral Pilgrimage to contribute to Britain's Millenium Celebrations. What a novel idea. Arts organizations leading nation-wide celebrations by touring their country. If the commonwealth of Virginia is listening, I volunteer the Chorale to bring the finest choral music into the schools and communities of our great state. Oh, right. You cut our funding. Sorry...
Anyway, their 2009 Pilgrimage celebrated the 350th birthday of Henry Purcell and the 50th of his latest musical offspring, James MacMillan, and the aforementioned recording is one of the fruits of that tour. The pairing could not be more apt & fit. Purcell's singular, expressive, harmonically-pungent writing captures the essence of the Psalms, Litanies, and Prophets he set. If Benjamin Britten was Purcell's 20th century heir, then that torch has been passed to MacMillan, who consistently responds with deeply felt, richly drawn, yet unaffected, immediately appealing music. In addition to the Carver-inspired motet, O Bone Jesu, two of MacMillan's Strathclyde Motets for communion are included (so-called for the University choir that commissioned them). One of MacMillan's most effective miniatures is the a cappella elegy, A Child's Prayer. This was the first work of MacMillan's I ever programmed, and simply stating that produces an intense itch to program it again. It was a response to the 1996 Dunblane tragedy in Scotland, where a gunman massacred some dozen schoolchildren. As it was one of the first mass-killings of its kind outside of the US, it shook Europe with acute force.
MacMillan's simple & haunting motet features two solo treble lines who weave an angelic & transcendent, chant-inspired duet over a dirge-like choral texture. As the annotator in this new cd observes "its musical no less than its theological consolation provides a sense of peace beyond the desolation." If that sounds esoteric or, on the other hand, unsubstantiated, it is worth quoting the composer himself, a devout Roman Catholic whose mostly religious music transcends both the singleness of its inspiration and the specificity of its subject(s):
"Even in our post-religious secular society, occasionally even the most agnostic and sceptically inclined music lovers will lapse into spiritual terminology to account for the impact of music in their lives. Many people still refer to music as the most spiritual of the arts."
I have been trying to get at why such music is "different." Not necessarily better (though I believe it is), but different, and significant, and worth the time and effort. And therein is another factor we can apply to my sermonette above about "pop" v. "art" culture and why the latter suffers in our country. Art requires participation--effort on behalf of the listener/observer/audience member. We've lost something in translation in our high-speed, hi-def world. And yet, amidst the latest version of Windows or the iphone or whatever, there is a renewed thirst for meaning, and a hunger for significance. I think there is also a revived interest in making connections and repairing gaps. And I believe music such as this may be just the think* to fill those voids. It's no surprise that many of the works on my newest playlist, "old and new" share that religious affinity upon which MacMillan remarks. Besides MacMillan & Purcell, I have Kile Smith's Vespers, another striking work--for chamber choir and Renaissance band (commissioned by Piffaro)--that looks backward for its source while sounding refreshingly original.
MacMillan's Roman lineage goes back to Monteverdi and the Catholicism of the Tudors (well, until Henry wanted a divorce, quite another digression). Kile looks to the Reformed tradition in a work that makes new wine of old Lutheran hymns. I hope the Chorale will be able to realize its dream of getting back to performing these masterworks, old and new. I'm planning on a Monteverdi Vespers for its 400th anniversary in 2010 (itself a study of old & new practices in a single work). Then I want to do Kile's Vespers. And then MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross paired with Buxtehude's passion-tide cantatas, Membra Jesu Nostri. The exciting young Brittish composer, Tarik O'Regan, has written a major work re-working the music of the medieval composer, Machaut, in his rousing Scattered Rhymes. Tarik's piece is not religious, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have those numinous and spiritual qualities that evoke such responses. I want to pair it with Machaut's seminal mass setting in honor of Notre Dame. A seven-hundred year-old work that is a specific product of a French Catholic still speaks in an ageless & relevant voice of the powers of the human imagination. There may be no one "universal" language. But music is a great second, and one that makes life more meaningful.
That's enough to keep me listening, making connections, musing, and sharing why, to paraphrase another modernist (Debussy, who looked back in order to move forward) "music is the best means of expression we have."
So this was a sermon, after all, Thank you for indulging me. Until next time.
*Neither I nor my spell-check caught this "mistake." Since its Freudian nature is rather apt, given the context, it stands.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
VC: Sing in the Seasons--Reprise
"Only connect" is the aphoristic motto of E.M. Forster's beloved novel, Howard's End. The image of Anthony Hopkins' gaze at the end of the Merchant & Ivory film still lingers in my memory as a classic example of an actor's silent expression expressing more than many words could.
I've already written about the Chorale's opening concert, "Sing in the Seasons." If you've read any of my other posts then my interest in making connections--between & across artists, genres, periods & styles--should be obvious.
The main reason we are reprising this opening concert is because many audience members and singers alike asked me to just do it again. I've never done a "back-by-popular-demand" performance this way, as my polymath wont is variety, newness, and adventure.
And I've never led a more well-received concert. Period. This program of varied songs with texts connecting to the seasons of the year was/is a motley mix I wasn't sure would work. The variety, eclecticism, and unexpectedness--the surprise of it--all contributed to its having universal appeal at each of the initial 3 performances. So we're doing it again this Sunday, November 8, at 5 pm, at 2nd Presbyterian (7305 Hampton Blvd), Norfolk. No tickets necessary. Just come and hear it!
Without analyzing too much, I want to make a few connections as to why I think it worked as well as it did. The program in performance proved to be better balanced than it appeared on paper. I quipped in my pre-concert "meet the music" chat that if a conducting student had brought this program to me I would have told him he was crazy! A modernist 9/11 elegy between an American standard and "Danny Boy?" Renaissance madrigals juxtaposed with pop-influenced Shakespeare songs? Impressionist miniatures by Debussy & a little-known Nordic cousin named Lundvik? And what about the unpronounceable Nordic name Jaakko Mäntyjärvi? How do these disparate pieces fit together?
Yet the melting pot--or melting cauldron--I should say, referring to the Mäntyjärvi work, the performance of which epitomized the program's reception. "Double, Double, Toil and Trouble," the Witches' chorus from Shakespeare's Scottish play was offered as a Halloween trick & treat, and was greeted with laughter, surprise, and spirited applause each concert, as it rounded off the eclectic fall season. The program opens with a muted arrangement of the Kozma/Mercer standard, "Autumn Leaves." Dominick Argento's piquant elegy to 9/11, a setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet LXIV, followed. The Argento was paired with Joe Flummerfelt's meltingly beautiful arrangement of Danny Boy. That pairing could not have worked better in concert. The Witches Chorus concluded the opening quarter.
I've already written about the connection of the Jewish composers on the program--Autumn Leaves, though known in the US as a Johnny Mercer standard, would not exist were it not for Joseph Kozma's music. Kozma was a Hungarian Jew who fled the Nazis for Paris, where his life and career had a 2nd act as a song-writer and film composer. The other book-end to the program is Gershwin's "Summertime." One of the most popular songs of all time was written by a NY Jew of Russian descent to a tune based on a Ukrainian folk-song that somehow captures the spirit of African-Americans in South Carolina in the wake of Reconstruction! Talk about making connections! And they don't stop there. Todd Duncan, the great baritone who created the role of Porgy (who would go on to a distinguished teaching career--I am proud to be among his vocal grand-children, as one of my teachers, Marvin Keenze, was one of Duncan's finest students) described his audition for Gershwin:
"Here I was a negro man singing for a New York Jew this old, Italian aria!"
Ground-breaking, boundary-bending, category-defying, indeed. Only connect.
Another connection to make where Jewish composers are concerned is to the English composer of Italian-Jewish descent, Gerald Finzi. Finzi's rhapsodic setting of Robert Bridges' "Nightingales" closes the section devoted to spring. The final quarter of the program, themed around summer, opens with a pair of songs by Finzi's elder contemporary, Frederick Delius. Both composers have ties to the English Musical Renaissance begun by Elgar and Holst, and epitomized by the pastoral, romantic music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The English pastoral sound is a not-too-distant cousin of French impressionism, and the influence of Claude Debussy can be heard in many of the works on our program.
Debussy described music as "a dream from which the veils have been lifted." The effect of an actor's silence--the impressions one gets from observing a great actor, like Anthony Hopkins, in the anecdote above--can be more powerful than emotions "expressed" at heightened pitch, volume, or force. Rather than "express" an emotion, or "represent" it, impressionism sought to convey a fluid sense of motion (picture a classic impressionist painting by Monet, for example, where the edges are blurred, and the colors blend and merge seamlessly together). Thus the canvases (and the scores) appear to be in motion themselves. By representing such a fluid process, Debussy attempted to convey "not the expression of feeling, but the feeling itself."
I think he achieved his aim, and his impressionist miniatures for a capella chorus are prismatic gems through which one hears the colors of his musical canvas. Debussy was famously influenced by the American painter James Whistler, and it was the latter's Nocturne in Blue and Grey that solidified Debussy's path towards creating musical equivalents to "the experiment of finding the different combinations possible within a single color."
The possibility of different combinations around a single color are explored in the Delius songs (themselves nocturnes), Hildor Lundvik's impressionist triptych (actually called "Nocturnes") and among other works on our program, Adolphus Hailstork's "Nocturne."
Adolphus' evocative work uses modernist techniques to evoke the atmosphere of a summer night. The individual sections of the choir--seemingly at random--hum and "buzz" short motives that intertwine and create a sound world reminiscent of a summer night outdoors amidst the stars and sounds of nature. The beautiful poem is declaimed by the sopranos, like a serenade atop the natural accompaniment of the insects & night-sounds. Hailstork's Nocturne was among the concert's highlights.
Other highlights of our eclectic cauldron of seasonal songs include three Shakespeare songs of Matthew Harris. The first two are juxtaposed with Renaissance madrigals by the Bard's contemporary, Thomas Morley. "O Mistress Mine" and "It was a lover and his lass" are both pop-influenced ballads. Connecting elements of the madrigal with a dash of impressionism, filtered through a contemporary, pop/rock/jazz sensibility, Matt has written a number of striking, original, and ear-ticklingly memorable songs. The penultimate song on the program, the one that sets up "Summertime" is a romping, choral hay-ride. "When daffodils begin to peer" has a new-grass twang to it, and sounds like what you might get if you combined a country tune with a madrigal texture set for a professional chamber chorus.
The avant-garde composer, John Cage asked that the line "we connect Satie to Thoreau" be spoken at the performance of many of his songs.
We're not performing any of Cage's songs on this program, but we've got a connection through some of the "chance" happenings in Hailstork's piece. And it's easy to connect Satie to impressionism, and though we're not offering any Satie (since he didn't compose any choral works), I think that most eccentric of French artistes would smilingly approve.
I think one of the most important connections with this (and all great) music is also the most obvious.
Great music simply connects us--to our emotions & experience, our memories & dreams. Music connects our minds to our hearts and souls, and ultimately connects us to each other. I hope you'll connect with what the Chorale is doing.
Come. Hear. Outstanding. Rewarding. Artists. Listen. Engage.
I've already written about the Chorale's opening concert, "Sing in the Seasons." If you've read any of my other posts then my interest in making connections--between & across artists, genres, periods & styles--should be obvious.
The main reason we are reprising this opening concert is because many audience members and singers alike asked me to just do it again. I've never done a "back-by-popular-demand" performance this way, as my polymath wont is variety, newness, and adventure.
And I've never led a more well-received concert. Period. This program of varied songs with texts connecting to the seasons of the year was/is a motley mix I wasn't sure would work. The variety, eclecticism, and unexpectedness--the surprise of it--all contributed to its having universal appeal at each of the initial 3 performances. So we're doing it again this Sunday, November 8, at 5 pm, at 2nd Presbyterian (7305 Hampton Blvd), Norfolk. No tickets necessary. Just come and hear it!
Without analyzing too much, I want to make a few connections as to why I think it worked as well as it did. The program in performance proved to be better balanced than it appeared on paper. I quipped in my pre-concert "meet the music" chat that if a conducting student had brought this program to me I would have told him he was crazy! A modernist 9/11 elegy between an American standard and "Danny Boy?" Renaissance madrigals juxtaposed with pop-influenced Shakespeare songs? Impressionist miniatures by Debussy & a little-known Nordic cousin named Lundvik? And what about the unpronounceable Nordic name Jaakko Mäntyjärvi? How do these disparate pieces fit together?
Yet the melting pot--or melting cauldron--I should say, referring to the Mäntyjärvi work, the performance of which epitomized the program's reception. "Double, Double, Toil and Trouble," the Witches' chorus from Shakespeare's Scottish play was offered as a Halloween trick & treat, and was greeted with laughter, surprise, and spirited applause each concert, as it rounded off the eclectic fall season. The program opens with a muted arrangement of the Kozma/Mercer standard, "Autumn Leaves." Dominick Argento's piquant elegy to 9/11, a setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet LXIV, followed. The Argento was paired with Joe Flummerfelt's meltingly beautiful arrangement of Danny Boy. That pairing could not have worked better in concert. The Witches Chorus concluded the opening quarter.
I've already written about the connection of the Jewish composers on the program--Autumn Leaves, though known in the US as a Johnny Mercer standard, would not exist were it not for Joseph Kozma's music. Kozma was a Hungarian Jew who fled the Nazis for Paris, where his life and career had a 2nd act as a song-writer and film composer. The other book-end to the program is Gershwin's "Summertime." One of the most popular songs of all time was written by a NY Jew of Russian descent to a tune based on a Ukrainian folk-song that somehow captures the spirit of African-Americans in South Carolina in the wake of Reconstruction! Talk about making connections! And they don't stop there. Todd Duncan, the great baritone who created the role of Porgy (who would go on to a distinguished teaching career--I am proud to be among his vocal grand-children, as one of my teachers, Marvin Keenze, was one of Duncan's finest students) described his audition for Gershwin:
"Here I was a negro man singing for a New York Jew this old, Italian aria!"
Ground-breaking, boundary-bending, category-defying, indeed. Only connect.
Another connection to make where Jewish composers are concerned is to the English composer of Italian-Jewish descent, Gerald Finzi. Finzi's rhapsodic setting of Robert Bridges' "Nightingales" closes the section devoted to spring. The final quarter of the program, themed around summer, opens with a pair of songs by Finzi's elder contemporary, Frederick Delius. Both composers have ties to the English Musical Renaissance begun by Elgar and Holst, and epitomized by the pastoral, romantic music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The English pastoral sound is a not-too-distant cousin of French impressionism, and the influence of Claude Debussy can be heard in many of the works on our program.
Debussy described music as "a dream from which the veils have been lifted." The effect of an actor's silence--the impressions one gets from observing a great actor, like Anthony Hopkins, in the anecdote above--can be more powerful than emotions "expressed" at heightened pitch, volume, or force. Rather than "express" an emotion, or "represent" it, impressionism sought to convey a fluid sense of motion (picture a classic impressionist painting by Monet, for example, where the edges are blurred, and the colors blend and merge seamlessly together). Thus the canvases (and the scores) appear to be in motion themselves. By representing such a fluid process, Debussy attempted to convey "not the expression of feeling, but the feeling itself."
I think he achieved his aim, and his impressionist miniatures for a capella chorus are prismatic gems through which one hears the colors of his musical canvas. Debussy was famously influenced by the American painter James Whistler, and it was the latter's Nocturne in Blue and Grey that solidified Debussy's path towards creating musical equivalents to "the experiment of finding the different combinations possible within a single color."
The possibility of different combinations around a single color are explored in the Delius songs (themselves nocturnes), Hildor Lundvik's impressionist triptych (actually called "Nocturnes") and among other works on our program, Adolphus Hailstork's "Nocturne."
Adolphus' evocative work uses modernist techniques to evoke the atmosphere of a summer night. The individual sections of the choir--seemingly at random--hum and "buzz" short motives that intertwine and create a sound world reminiscent of a summer night outdoors amidst the stars and sounds of nature. The beautiful poem is declaimed by the sopranos, like a serenade atop the natural accompaniment of the insects & night-sounds. Hailstork's Nocturne was among the concert's highlights.
Other highlights of our eclectic cauldron of seasonal songs include three Shakespeare songs of Matthew Harris. The first two are juxtaposed with Renaissance madrigals by the Bard's contemporary, Thomas Morley. "O Mistress Mine" and "It was a lover and his lass" are both pop-influenced ballads. Connecting elements of the madrigal with a dash of impressionism, filtered through a contemporary, pop/rock/jazz sensibility, Matt has written a number of striking, original, and ear-ticklingly memorable songs. The penultimate song on the program, the one that sets up "Summertime" is a romping, choral hay-ride. "When daffodils begin to peer" has a new-grass twang to it, and sounds like what you might get if you combined a country tune with a madrigal texture set for a professional chamber chorus.
The avant-garde composer, John Cage asked that the line "we connect Satie to Thoreau" be spoken at the performance of many of his songs.
We're not performing any of Cage's songs on this program, but we've got a connection through some of the "chance" happenings in Hailstork's piece. And it's easy to connect Satie to impressionism, and though we're not offering any Satie (since he didn't compose any choral works), I think that most eccentric of French artistes would smilingly approve.
I think one of the most important connections with this (and all great) music is also the most obvious.
Great music simply connects us--to our emotions & experience, our memories & dreams. Music connects our minds to our hearts and souls, and ultimately connects us to each other. I hope you'll connect with what the Chorale is doing.
Come. Hear. Outstanding. Rewarding. Artists. Listen. Engage.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Romantic Triangles (Wagner, Brahms & Gounod)
In the last week, I have participated--as an assistant conductor, and then as an audience member--in three major performances of seminal 19th century masterworks. Last Saturday evening I was backstage, assisting my friend and colleague, Maestro Steven White on a concert of Wagner excerpts for Opera Roanoke. Thursday night Amy and I attended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performance of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, led by Riccardo Muti. Friday afternoon, I attended the Lyric Opera of Chicago's matinee performance of their production of Gounod's Faust. It is only in hindsight I connect these three composers and their representative works.
"Wagner in the Valley" was a gala concert, with the great soprano-turned-Wagnerian-mentor, Evelyn Lear in attendance. Three of her Wagnerian proteges were the soloists for excerpts from Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung. Steven led the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra in a performance that outclassed anything I've experienced in my 10+ years of working with a small opera company consistently recognized for the artistic quality of its performances.
Indeed, it is a bittersweet irony in Roanoke that over that same span, the level of artistic excellence has risen to new heights while support has shrunk to where the company cannot afford to mount a single full production this season. I am optimistic the overwhelming success of last Saturday evening will help change that. The full house was treated to exceptional music making from all involved. The program was as bold as the artist who composed it. The tenor Brian Register showed his dramatic and essentially lyric mettle in the "Prize song" from Meistersinger, which followed the magisterial overture. Steven offered verbal commentary between the selections which struck just the right balance of informative annotation & witty, urbane banter. Bernstein would have been proud.
The first half concluded with the "Prelude and Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde. I have never heard the RSO strings in better form than they were for this Wagner concert. Evelyn remarked at the reception following the program she thought she was in at Bayreuth or Munich! One of her colleagues, the Wagnerian tenor-turned-mentor, Claude Heater, flew in from San Francisco and was moved to tears by a performance that took him completely by surprise. While not as famous a Wagnerian name as Windgassen or Vickers, Heater performed Tristan with Birgit Nilsson & Astrid Varnay, under the batons of the likes of Karajan and Maazel. Far from faint praise from two eminent Wagnerians.
The Liebestod is one of the most ecstatic pieces of music ever written. Soprano Othalie Graham was equal to the task and the ravishing performance she, Steven, and the RSO created will linger in my memory. I wrote several essays about Wagner and my experiences at the Bard Music Festival this past August. I do not mean to take anything away from those memorable concerts when I say this concert in Roanoke surpassed them. It was one of those seemingly magical experiences where all of the constituent elements--score, singer, orchestra, conductor AND audience--came together in not just symbolic but substantive harmony.
The second half of the concert showcased two great scenes from the Ring cycle. If one had to narrow a 14 hour epic down to 45 minutes of music, then the final scene of Act I of Walküre and the finale of the entire cycle, the "Immolation" scene from Götterdämmerung, are bankable choices.
Register was joined by soprano Julia Rowling for a dramatically engaging and beautifully sung love scene from the most famous of the Ring's four operas. Walküre has perhaps the last readily apparent examples of Wagner's debt to his 19th century operatic uncles. There are moments of recitative that remind one Wagner learned his craft in Paris, following the examples of the grand opera composers Meyerbeer and Auber. I was conscious of this connection Friday while listening to Faust, and shall return to it shortly. Steven quipped that in the 19th century one had to be decisively pro- or anti- Wagner. "One couldn't love Brahms or Verdi without calling Wagner the devil!" is not as outrageous a claim as it may sound to our post-modern aesthetic which is--for better or worse--inclusive. Schools or styles no longer require the fidelity they did in the Romantic period.
Critics point to the works of Mahler and Strauss--the two greatest Wagnerians that bridged the span from the 19th to the 20th centuries--as representative of the last flowering of Romanticism. One could claim the finale of Götterdämmerung, however, as the first example in this dense body of music written up until the first World War. Wagner anticipates the modernist penchant for pastiche in combining layers of contrasting themes (the leitmotiv). After Brünnhilde has returned the ring to its rightful owners, martyred herself on the pyre that will literally consume the world, the score anticipates the fractured and jarred poly-rhythmic work of 20th century modernists. With sections of the orchestra playing in no fewer than three different meters, the essential motive of the entire cycle--and it's most beautiful--emerges in the violins. "The Redemption of the World through Love" closes this epic tetralogy with music of sublime transcendence. As I have stated elsewhere, Wagner should not be required listening for those utterly disgusted with his person and his beliefs. But for those able to separate the man from the music, the latter is engaging, enthralling, and rewarding in ways that only great art can be.
Brahms was Wagner's polar opposite both aesthetically and politically. A philo-semite, Brahms avoided explicitly Christian references when compiling the "libretto" of his choral & orchestral masterpiece, the German Requiem. In what many regard as THE great choral masterwork, Brahms carefully selected texts from the Old and New Testaments that speak of comfort and consolation. The "fire & brimstone" of the "day of wrath" are replaced by the anxiety of transience and the unknowable beyond. Though Bach's B Minor Mass and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis are equals to the great masterwork title, Brahms' Requiem would be my desert island choice.
The noble performance Muti led Thursday night in Chicago only deepened that conviction. The sound of the CSO chorus has changed considerably from its heyday under Margaret Hillis when the CSO was led by the dynamo Georg Solti. The visceral sound has been tempered under Duaine Wolf. I have never heard this chorus sound better than it did under Riccardo Muti. While the sound was transparent & clean, it had depth and a range of color rarely heard in a 150-voice chorus. Muti shaped the entire performance beautifully. With impeccable control and exquisite proportion, the score was played & sung with a keen sense of its structure, its form, its architecture. Muti has the technical facility of Maazel without the idiosyncratic imprimaturs that sometimes mar the latter's interpretations. If Muti's reading lacked the urgent drive of a Masur or Rattle, the poise & breadth were welcome. This pillar of 19th century German music, a work of deeply felt humanism, is yet another example of art's ability to transcend its origins. Brahms wanted to write a more universal work of remembrance than the Catholic Mass for the dead. That his Requiem speaks to audiences all over the world 150 years later (and counting) is evidence enough. If music is not the universal language the cliché would have us believe, it is the closest one we have, as such enduring monuments attest.
Another monument of German romanticism is Goethe's magnum opus, Faust. Of the pantheon of musical adaptations--Berlioz, Schumann, Mahler, Boito, among others--none is more central than the operatic adaption by Charles Gounod. One of the ultimate tales of redemption, Gounod's Faust is considered the grand opera of 19th century Paris. The trio of world-renowned singers essaying the ill-fated triangle at the heart of the story were outstanding in Chicago Friday. The Polish tenor sensation, Piotr Beczala, is the real deal. May his vocal health continue, and his career flourish. If you have the chance to hear him live, do so. I found his lyric voice to be the most beautiful and compelling to my ears since Nicolai Gedda. Faust is easily upstaged by his colleagues, Mephistopheles & Marguerite, but Beczala more than held his own, and his singing was the musical highlight of the afternoon. His Marguerite, Ana Maria Martinez, matched her exquisite singing with an interpretation that showed remarkable range & courage. This was no cut-out damsel-in-distress-heroine. From the giddy freedom of adolescent love to the heart-rending tragedy of abandonment, punishment, & delusion, this Marguerite was a real person. The opening of the final prison scene was almost too difficult to watch. The devil was the suave and cavalier Rene Pape. The great German bass sounded magnificent--it is amazing how resonant and free that chain-smoking throat sounds! He appeared to be going through the motions for the first couple acts, but from Act III on his charisma was present and dominant.
I have mixed feelings about Gounod's Faust--I sometimes agree with Wagner about the apparent frivolity of much Parisian opera. Meaningless choruses, empty display, and purposeless parades are all a liability where requisite spectacle is concerned. But in those operas where the constituent elements blend to where no one ingredient is out of balance--as in a gourmet sauce--the cumulative effect can be astounding. I experienced just that astonishment earlier this summer with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (and wrote about it in August).
I had a similar experience Friday with Faust. The soldiers chorus in Act IV, a crowd-pleaser, arguably a dispensable set piece, was actually moving in one of the better bits of staging in the show. While the outstanding men of the chorus (prepared by another great friend and colleague, Donald Nally) sing their rousing song, Valentin presents memorial flags to the anxious women who have just learned they have been newly widowed. The tension between the music and the drama was a poignant example of opera's unique ability to create such moments. And as I listened to the ravishing score--Gounod inherited & earned the Parisian grand operatic mantle from Meyerbeer--I was struck by how blurred the boundaries are in 19th century opera. Some of the sensual lyricism of the melodic writing and the rich palette of colors in the winds, for example, are not far removed from Wagner. We tend to compartmentalize 19th century opera by country or composer--Italy/Verdi, France/Gounod, and Germany/Wagner. There are works at every corner of that triangle where those boundaries dissolve.
I would not have anticipated such a connecting thread between Wagner, Brahms & Gounod. But music's ability to forge connections, to speak across time and space--to literally sing meaning into being--cannot be overstated. Music, the universal medium, may be the best catalyst for redeeming the world through love, as long as it inspires the beings who hear it to follow its example.
"Wagner in the Valley" was a gala concert, with the great soprano-turned-Wagnerian-mentor, Evelyn Lear in attendance. Three of her Wagnerian proteges were the soloists for excerpts from Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung. Steven led the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra in a performance that outclassed anything I've experienced in my 10+ years of working with a small opera company consistently recognized for the artistic quality of its performances.
Indeed, it is a bittersweet irony in Roanoke that over that same span, the level of artistic excellence has risen to new heights while support has shrunk to where the company cannot afford to mount a single full production this season. I am optimistic the overwhelming success of last Saturday evening will help change that. The full house was treated to exceptional music making from all involved. The program was as bold as the artist who composed it. The tenor Brian Register showed his dramatic and essentially lyric mettle in the "Prize song" from Meistersinger, which followed the magisterial overture. Steven offered verbal commentary between the selections which struck just the right balance of informative annotation & witty, urbane banter. Bernstein would have been proud.
The first half concluded with the "Prelude and Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde. I have never heard the RSO strings in better form than they were for this Wagner concert. Evelyn remarked at the reception following the program she thought she was in at Bayreuth or Munich! One of her colleagues, the Wagnerian tenor-turned-mentor, Claude Heater, flew in from San Francisco and was moved to tears by a performance that took him completely by surprise. While not as famous a Wagnerian name as Windgassen or Vickers, Heater performed Tristan with Birgit Nilsson & Astrid Varnay, under the batons of the likes of Karajan and Maazel. Far from faint praise from two eminent Wagnerians.
The Liebestod is one of the most ecstatic pieces of music ever written. Soprano Othalie Graham was equal to the task and the ravishing performance she, Steven, and the RSO created will linger in my memory. I wrote several essays about Wagner and my experiences at the Bard Music Festival this past August. I do not mean to take anything away from those memorable concerts when I say this concert in Roanoke surpassed them. It was one of those seemingly magical experiences where all of the constituent elements--score, singer, orchestra, conductor AND audience--came together in not just symbolic but substantive harmony.
The second half of the concert showcased two great scenes from the Ring cycle. If one had to narrow a 14 hour epic down to 45 minutes of music, then the final scene of Act I of Walküre and the finale of the entire cycle, the "Immolation" scene from Götterdämmerung, are bankable choices.
Register was joined by soprano Julia Rowling for a dramatically engaging and beautifully sung love scene from the most famous of the Ring's four operas. Walküre has perhaps the last readily apparent examples of Wagner's debt to his 19th century operatic uncles. There are moments of recitative that remind one Wagner learned his craft in Paris, following the examples of the grand opera composers Meyerbeer and Auber. I was conscious of this connection Friday while listening to Faust, and shall return to it shortly. Steven quipped that in the 19th century one had to be decisively pro- or anti- Wagner. "One couldn't love Brahms or Verdi without calling Wagner the devil!" is not as outrageous a claim as it may sound to our post-modern aesthetic which is--for better or worse--inclusive. Schools or styles no longer require the fidelity they did in the Romantic period.
Critics point to the works of Mahler and Strauss--the two greatest Wagnerians that bridged the span from the 19th to the 20th centuries--as representative of the last flowering of Romanticism. One could claim the finale of Götterdämmerung, however, as the first example in this dense body of music written up until the first World War. Wagner anticipates the modernist penchant for pastiche in combining layers of contrasting themes (the leitmotiv). After Brünnhilde has returned the ring to its rightful owners, martyred herself on the pyre that will literally consume the world, the score anticipates the fractured and jarred poly-rhythmic work of 20th century modernists. With sections of the orchestra playing in no fewer than three different meters, the essential motive of the entire cycle--and it's most beautiful--emerges in the violins. "The Redemption of the World through Love" closes this epic tetralogy with music of sublime transcendence. As I have stated elsewhere, Wagner should not be required listening for those utterly disgusted with his person and his beliefs. But for those able to separate the man from the music, the latter is engaging, enthralling, and rewarding in ways that only great art can be.
Brahms was Wagner's polar opposite both aesthetically and politically. A philo-semite, Brahms avoided explicitly Christian references when compiling the "libretto" of his choral & orchestral masterpiece, the German Requiem. In what many regard as THE great choral masterwork, Brahms carefully selected texts from the Old and New Testaments that speak of comfort and consolation. The "fire & brimstone" of the "day of wrath" are replaced by the anxiety of transience and the unknowable beyond. Though Bach's B Minor Mass and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis are equals to the great masterwork title, Brahms' Requiem would be my desert island choice.
The noble performance Muti led Thursday night in Chicago only deepened that conviction. The sound of the CSO chorus has changed considerably from its heyday under Margaret Hillis when the CSO was led by the dynamo Georg Solti. The visceral sound has been tempered under Duaine Wolf. I have never heard this chorus sound better than it did under Riccardo Muti. While the sound was transparent & clean, it had depth and a range of color rarely heard in a 150-voice chorus. Muti shaped the entire performance beautifully. With impeccable control and exquisite proportion, the score was played & sung with a keen sense of its structure, its form, its architecture. Muti has the technical facility of Maazel without the idiosyncratic imprimaturs that sometimes mar the latter's interpretations. If Muti's reading lacked the urgent drive of a Masur or Rattle, the poise & breadth were welcome. This pillar of 19th century German music, a work of deeply felt humanism, is yet another example of art's ability to transcend its origins. Brahms wanted to write a more universal work of remembrance than the Catholic Mass for the dead. That his Requiem speaks to audiences all over the world 150 years later (and counting) is evidence enough. If music is not the universal language the cliché would have us believe, it is the closest one we have, as such enduring monuments attest.
Another monument of German romanticism is Goethe's magnum opus, Faust. Of the pantheon of musical adaptations--Berlioz, Schumann, Mahler, Boito, among others--none is more central than the operatic adaption by Charles Gounod. One of the ultimate tales of redemption, Gounod's Faust is considered the grand opera of 19th century Paris. The trio of world-renowned singers essaying the ill-fated triangle at the heart of the story were outstanding in Chicago Friday. The Polish tenor sensation, Piotr Beczala, is the real deal. May his vocal health continue, and his career flourish. If you have the chance to hear him live, do so. I found his lyric voice to be the most beautiful and compelling to my ears since Nicolai Gedda. Faust is easily upstaged by his colleagues, Mephistopheles & Marguerite, but Beczala more than held his own, and his singing was the musical highlight of the afternoon. His Marguerite, Ana Maria Martinez, matched her exquisite singing with an interpretation that showed remarkable range & courage. This was no cut-out damsel-in-distress-heroine. From the giddy freedom of adolescent love to the heart-rending tragedy of abandonment, punishment, & delusion, this Marguerite was a real person. The opening of the final prison scene was almost too difficult to watch. The devil was the suave and cavalier Rene Pape. The great German bass sounded magnificent--it is amazing how resonant and free that chain-smoking throat sounds! He appeared to be going through the motions for the first couple acts, but from Act III on his charisma was present and dominant.
I have mixed feelings about Gounod's Faust--I sometimes agree with Wagner about the apparent frivolity of much Parisian opera. Meaningless choruses, empty display, and purposeless parades are all a liability where requisite spectacle is concerned. But in those operas where the constituent elements blend to where no one ingredient is out of balance--as in a gourmet sauce--the cumulative effect can be astounding. I experienced just that astonishment earlier this summer with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (and wrote about it in August).
I had a similar experience Friday with Faust. The soldiers chorus in Act IV, a crowd-pleaser, arguably a dispensable set piece, was actually moving in one of the better bits of staging in the show. While the outstanding men of the chorus (prepared by another great friend and colleague, Donald Nally) sing their rousing song, Valentin presents memorial flags to the anxious women who have just learned they have been newly widowed. The tension between the music and the drama was a poignant example of opera's unique ability to create such moments. And as I listened to the ravishing score--Gounod inherited & earned the Parisian grand operatic mantle from Meyerbeer--I was struck by how blurred the boundaries are in 19th century opera. Some of the sensual lyricism of the melodic writing and the rich palette of colors in the winds, for example, are not far removed from Wagner. We tend to compartmentalize 19th century opera by country or composer--Italy/Verdi, France/Gounod, and Germany/Wagner. There are works at every corner of that triangle where those boundaries dissolve.
I would not have anticipated such a connecting thread between Wagner, Brahms & Gounod. But music's ability to forge connections, to speak across time and space--to literally sing meaning into being--cannot be overstated. Music, the universal medium, may be the best catalyst for redeeming the world through love, as long as it inspires the beings who hear it to follow its example.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
All the trees of the fields shall clap their hands...
This is not an essay about the talking trees from the Lord of the Rings, the Ents, nor any other phantasmagoria.
Rather, I hope to borrow the quote from the prophet Isaiah (actually, 2nd Isaiah) and use it to connect the seemingly disparate threads of Old Testament theology, the survival of non-profit-arts-organizations, and Randall Thompson's cantata, The Peaceable Kingdom.
Earlier this year I wrote about a couple of prophetic poets ("Singing in Strange Lands") and the writings of the eminent Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann. I have been in the thrall of Professor Brueggemann since reading his seminal work on the major exilic prophets, The Prophetic Imagination. It is one of those books that literally changed my life. I am currently enthralled with/by An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible. Brueggemann is attuned to the sensitivities of Jewish-Christian tensions where Biblical hermeneutics are concerned. In book after book, he goes at length to get at the core of Israel's relationship to God (YHWH, in his recent volumes), and one of his theses is the cycle that is enacted and reenacted in both the Old Testament and throughout Israel's history. This is a cycle of exile and deliverance, of abandonment and reconciliation, of utter loss and inexplicable restoration.
Using familiar poetic texts from the Psalms and prophets, Brueggemann charts a cycle that begins with the consequence of Israel's infidelity--exile as punishment. The heart of Israel--for the community and the individual--is a particular dialogic (and dialectic) relationship. That relationship, on the human side, is defined by a distinct personality that is at once uncomfortably honest & direct, and defiant in the resilience of its hopefulness.
"In that situation of nullity, Israel is compelled to new ways in its practice and life of faith." He goes on to briefly map out five areas of newness: 1. "Practice of Faith in Exile;" 2. "Repentance;" 3. "The Practice of Grief;" 4. "Presence in Absence;" and 5. "Resilient Hope for Regathering."
There is a Jewish real-ness, a gritty quality often unsettling to the polite Christian, that Brueggemann distinguishes. I find it refreshing to be reminded of such honesty, to "refuse denial, and resist pretense." This is at the core of Israel's persistence & perseverance in the "practice of faith in exile." The second step, though obvious enough, is one to not gloss over in a modern world plagued by a lack of accountability, truth-telling, and genuine reconciliation. The author has written extensively on Israel's "practice of grief" and I have previously alluded to his insightful exegesis of the Psalms. He charts a psychologically sound progression of "lament and complaint"--what we'd call "venting"--as a prerequisite to healing. "The practice of grief is an exercise in truth-telling." Every mourner, every victim, every suffering individual (regardless of faith or culture) who has fully grieved a loss can attest to the truth of that statement. AND can recognize the dangerous pitfall of its opposite--the disingenuousness of NOT fully grieving, of not getting literally to the bottom of the truth.
"It is a mark of the inventiveness and courage of Israel in exile that it refused to settle for flat, angry, one-dimensional absence." These back-bone defining character traits lead naturally and organically into the final phase of the cycle, the inspiring "resilient hope" of Israel and the Jews throughout history. Brueggemann makes the provocatively bold assertion here (and has elsewhere) that the nation of Israel and its leaders from Abraham and Moses to the prophets convinced YHWH to change YHWH's mind.
It was that boldness and resilience, the "audacity to hope" (sorry, couldn't resist!) that caused me to think about the struggle non-profit arts organizations in general (and mine, in particular) face today, and how they/we respond. Many of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle of a cycle from loss to restoration, from abandonment to fulfillment, from exile to homecoming. How many stories have we read of arts organizations mis-managing personnel/transitions/fund-raising/etc, finding themselves "in the hole" and confronting what to do with their displacement or predicament--their metaphoric exile?
I believe many of us get stuck somewhere in the middle--the repentance/grief/presence-in-absence core of the experience--and therefore miss the "energizing and amazement" that comes with (because of!) resilient hope. The truth-telling/stock-taking steps get short-changed and too often internal division, imminent fears of extinction, and a total loss of vision prevent those necessary intermediary steps from happening.
The "presence-in-absence" phase is central. Just when many organizations want to reign in their programming, clip the artistic wings, and make every cut-back possible to "save" the organization is when vision and action are required. I wrote earlier about Michael Kaiser's essential book for such organizations, The Art of the Turnaround. One of his ten principal rules is: "you cannot save your way to health." And while he's not advocating increasing operating budgets in the middle of recessions, he does make the valid point that groups must be bold in programming and not trim those artistic wings, nor the engines that run and promote them. The connection between this stubborn persistence and the subsequent hope is palpable. Such hope sustains not only figuratively but--as in the case of Israel--literally guarantees its survival. Why shouldn't arts organizations employ such progressively focused zeal?
I am also struck by the fact that Jewish artists--composers, painters, playwrights, directors--played a significant, indeed central role in the 20th century. The epoch that wrought the most devastation on Jews witnessed countless examples of their inexplicable resilience. From every genre of European music and art, from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, from Hollywood to stages around the world, the work of Jewish men and women shaped the richest & most varied period in our cultural history. Jewish entrepreneurs, executives, and patrons have been just as vital in insuring both the creation and the sustenance of this body of work--and the arts themselves.
I have been in a particularly philo-semitic phase of my consciousness since reading The Prophetic Imagination. Revisiting the dazzling poetry of Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekiel and Amos, to name but a few, has opened up an imaginative world. The title above is from one of the passages of "resilience" Brueggemann cites. There are many such pages of wonderment--mountains bursting into songs--in these poems. And considering Biblical passages as poems--spending time with their aesthetic qualities--is engaging and rewarding regardless of one's religious orientation.
"For ye shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace" is the verse that precedes the hand-clapping arboreta and is the inspiration for the penultimate section of Randall Thompson's The Peaceable Kingdom. This marvelous, too-seldom-heard (at least in its entirety) a capella cantata happens to enact the same cycle Brueggemann describes. Following an affirming & noble invocation ("Say ye to the righteous") Thompson evokes the harshness of prophetic judgement ("Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand"). The cantata rests on a plaintive exilic poem ("The paper reeds by the brooks"), and then gradually moves towards presence-in-absence, resilience-in-hope, and ends with an inexorably crescendoing double chorus ("Ye shall have a song").
I will post my program notes for the Chorale's Holiday program in a couple of weeks. In them, I talk about some of the challenges of programming. I also try to make the connection between the Jewish holiday traditions, Advent & Christmas, the Jewish-Lutheran convert, Felix Mendelssohn, Thompson's cantata, and Britten's Christ's Nativity. My original worries about coherence and connection have been supplanted by unabashed enthusiasm and optimism for another eclectic & engaging program. Plan now on hearing the Chorale Dec 4 & 5. There is an amazing energy present when individuals and communities emerge from difficulty into new possibility.
Rather, I hope to borrow the quote from the prophet Isaiah (actually, 2nd Isaiah) and use it to connect the seemingly disparate threads of Old Testament theology, the survival of non-profit-arts-organizations, and Randall Thompson's cantata, The Peaceable Kingdom.
Earlier this year I wrote about a couple of prophetic poets ("Singing in Strange Lands") and the writings of the eminent Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann. I have been in the thrall of Professor Brueggemann since reading his seminal work on the major exilic prophets, The Prophetic Imagination. It is one of those books that literally changed my life. I am currently enthralled with/by An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible. Brueggemann is attuned to the sensitivities of Jewish-Christian tensions where Biblical hermeneutics are concerned. In book after book, he goes at length to get at the core of Israel's relationship to God (YHWH, in his recent volumes), and one of his theses is the cycle that is enacted and reenacted in both the Old Testament and throughout Israel's history. This is a cycle of exile and deliverance, of abandonment and reconciliation, of utter loss and inexplicable restoration.
Using familiar poetic texts from the Psalms and prophets, Brueggemann charts a cycle that begins with the consequence of Israel's infidelity--exile as punishment. The heart of Israel--for the community and the individual--is a particular dialogic (and dialectic) relationship. That relationship, on the human side, is defined by a distinct personality that is at once uncomfortably honest & direct, and defiant in the resilience of its hopefulness.
"In that situation of nullity, Israel is compelled to new ways in its practice and life of faith." He goes on to briefly map out five areas of newness: 1. "Practice of Faith in Exile;" 2. "Repentance;" 3. "The Practice of Grief;" 4. "Presence in Absence;" and 5. "Resilient Hope for Regathering."
There is a Jewish real-ness, a gritty quality often unsettling to the polite Christian, that Brueggemann distinguishes. I find it refreshing to be reminded of such honesty, to "refuse denial, and resist pretense." This is at the core of Israel's persistence & perseverance in the "practice of faith in exile." The second step, though obvious enough, is one to not gloss over in a modern world plagued by a lack of accountability, truth-telling, and genuine reconciliation. The author has written extensively on Israel's "practice of grief" and I have previously alluded to his insightful exegesis of the Psalms. He charts a psychologically sound progression of "lament and complaint"--what we'd call "venting"--as a prerequisite to healing. "The practice of grief is an exercise in truth-telling." Every mourner, every victim, every suffering individual (regardless of faith or culture) who has fully grieved a loss can attest to the truth of that statement. AND can recognize the dangerous pitfall of its opposite--the disingenuousness of NOT fully grieving, of not getting literally to the bottom of the truth.
"It is a mark of the inventiveness and courage of Israel in exile that it refused to settle for flat, angry, one-dimensional absence." These back-bone defining character traits lead naturally and organically into the final phase of the cycle, the inspiring "resilient hope" of Israel and the Jews throughout history. Brueggemann makes the provocatively bold assertion here (and has elsewhere) that the nation of Israel and its leaders from Abraham and Moses to the prophets convinced YHWH to change YHWH's mind.
It was that boldness and resilience, the "audacity to hope" (sorry, couldn't resist!) that caused me to think about the struggle non-profit arts organizations in general (and mine, in particular) face today, and how they/we respond. Many of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle of a cycle from loss to restoration, from abandonment to fulfillment, from exile to homecoming. How many stories have we read of arts organizations mis-managing personnel/transitions/fund-raising/etc, finding themselves "in the hole" and confronting what to do with their displacement or predicament--their metaphoric exile?
I believe many of us get stuck somewhere in the middle--the repentance/grief/presence-in-absence core of the experience--and therefore miss the "energizing and amazement" that comes with (because of!) resilient hope. The truth-telling/stock-taking steps get short-changed and too often internal division, imminent fears of extinction, and a total loss of vision prevent those necessary intermediary steps from happening.
The "presence-in-absence" phase is central. Just when many organizations want to reign in their programming, clip the artistic wings, and make every cut-back possible to "save" the organization is when vision and action are required. I wrote earlier about Michael Kaiser's essential book for such organizations, The Art of the Turnaround. One of his ten principal rules is: "you cannot save your way to health." And while he's not advocating increasing operating budgets in the middle of recessions, he does make the valid point that groups must be bold in programming and not trim those artistic wings, nor the engines that run and promote them. The connection between this stubborn persistence and the subsequent hope is palpable. Such hope sustains not only figuratively but--as in the case of Israel--literally guarantees its survival. Why shouldn't arts organizations employ such progressively focused zeal?
I am also struck by the fact that Jewish artists--composers, painters, playwrights, directors--played a significant, indeed central role in the 20th century. The epoch that wrought the most devastation on Jews witnessed countless examples of their inexplicable resilience. From every genre of European music and art, from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, from Hollywood to stages around the world, the work of Jewish men and women shaped the richest & most varied period in our cultural history. Jewish entrepreneurs, executives, and patrons have been just as vital in insuring both the creation and the sustenance of this body of work--and the arts themselves.
I have been in a particularly philo-semitic phase of my consciousness since reading The Prophetic Imagination. Revisiting the dazzling poetry of Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekiel and Amos, to name but a few, has opened up an imaginative world. The title above is from one of the passages of "resilience" Brueggemann cites. There are many such pages of wonderment--mountains bursting into songs--in these poems. And considering Biblical passages as poems--spending time with their aesthetic qualities--is engaging and rewarding regardless of one's religious orientation.
"For ye shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace" is the verse that precedes the hand-clapping arboreta and is the inspiration for the penultimate section of Randall Thompson's The Peaceable Kingdom. This marvelous, too-seldom-heard (at least in its entirety) a capella cantata happens to enact the same cycle Brueggemann describes. Following an affirming & noble invocation ("Say ye to the righteous") Thompson evokes the harshness of prophetic judgement ("Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand"). The cantata rests on a plaintive exilic poem ("The paper reeds by the brooks"), and then gradually moves towards presence-in-absence, resilience-in-hope, and ends with an inexorably crescendoing double chorus ("Ye shall have a song").
I will post my program notes for the Chorale's Holiday program in a couple of weeks. In them, I talk about some of the challenges of programming. I also try to make the connection between the Jewish holiday traditions, Advent & Christmas, the Jewish-Lutheran convert, Felix Mendelssohn, Thompson's cantata, and Britten's Christ's Nativity. My original worries about coherence and connection have been supplanted by unabashed enthusiasm and optimism for another eclectic & engaging program. Plan now on hearing the Chorale Dec 4 & 5. There is an amazing energy present when individuals and communities emerge from difficulty into new possibility.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
"Not even the expression of feeling; it's the feeling itself." (Debussy on music)
In preparation for the Chorale's opening concert featuring Debussy's Trois Chansons as its centerpiece, I have been reading and musing over his fantastic collection of letters. The quotations are from the English edition translated and edited by Francois Lesure and Roger Nichols (Harvard). I have also found Leon Botstein's central essay in the Bard Music Festival companion book, Debussy and His World (Princeton) particularly illuminating where Debussy and impressionism intersect. Below are some musings on the subject interspersed with Debussy in his own words.
I believe with all my heart that music remains for all time the finest means of expression we have...It would be enough if music could make people listen…
Debussy's first orchestral masterpiece, the "Prelude to the afternoon of a faun" certainly made people listen. And started a literal sea-change in music by presaging its composers journey towards defining not only a style (impressionism) or a school (Debussyism) but creating a wave whose force--if imperceptible from outside--continues to affect and influence composers. His keen attentiveness to painting and poetry played no small part in this process.
He described music "as a dream from which the veils have been lifted." He alluded to this quality, and tellingly, the means he would employ from the "Prelude" forward to get to the essence of his expressive music--by creating impressions.
...is it perhaps the dream left over at the bottom of the faun’s flute?
To be more precise, it is the general impression of the poem
The birth of "musical impressionism" would not have been possible had its progenitor, Debussy, not had something against which to react. That something was the behemoth of Wagnerian music drama. I mused on Wagner in August while in residence at the Bard Music Festival. Critics of Wagner (and Debussy was certainly one, AFTER he exorcised the huge sway Wagner held over him early in his career) dismiss his hyper-emotional music as representational, merely descriptive and emotionally manipulative. While this is a gross oversimplification, the thread from Wagnerian leitmotif to B+ Hollywood film music is a clearer one than Wagnerians might like to admit.
And though Wagner often set mythical &/or supernatural subjects in his operas, he sought to write music that expressed real emotion. Such representational art has an agenda via the manipulativeness of a prescribed result or affect—via realistic description the listener/viewer is meant to feel a specific emotion the artist has sought to express. (The prelude to Tristan und Isolde is meant to express the unquenchable desire of the protagonists, simply put. Wagner’s “unending melody” is employed to achieve that specific, affective—and manipulative— end).
The painters associated with impressionism--and others on the outside of the movement, Turner & Whistler chief among them--attempted to get at the essence of an image or even more fundamentally, to get at the essence of color and light by capturing impressions of their subjects and attempting to depict a moment in time.
Debussy described music as “rhythmicized time” and one could say impressionist art is time represented (on canvas): the viscous flow of blurred images is analogous to time’s perpetual motion.
In these paintings the blurred textures give the canvases a fluid sense of motion—even the still lifes are not still! And if not in motion, they appear to have a presence (their essence?) that is multi-dimensional.
Of the essences of color and light, Debussy connected his impressionist Nocturnes to Whistler's studies of the same name:
It’s an experiment in finding the different combinations possible inside a single color, as a painter might make a study in grey, for example...
To me, this is the essential--in every sense--difference between Wagnerian realism and Debussy's impressionism.
By experimenting with those combinations that turned "rhythmicized time" into "impressions" of a poem or a color or a landscape, Debussy wrote music that was
not even the expression of feeling; it’s the feeling itself.
For Debussy the essence of such art was not easily achieved. His advice to budding artists is valuable regardless of what style or school one follows.
Time spent carefully creating the atmosphere in which a work of art must move is never wasted…one must never be in a hurry to write things down. One must allow the complex play of ideas free rein.
Elsewhere, with typical ironic detachment, he hits on another essential difference that gets at the distance between the objective realism of impressionism versus the subjective emotionalism of much realistic art.
…memory is a superior faculty, because you can pick from it the emotions you need.
Still more good advice for the young composer/painter/poet (and it is no coincidence that Debussy's advice is applicable to each genre--I have found the more I appreciate the paintings and the poetry from Debussy's circles, the more I appreciate the music. I believe the same could be said from any angle of this artistic triangle.)
…find the perfect expression for an idea and add only as much decoration as is absolutely necessary…
Though artists from Turner to Cezanne to Monet (and beyond) do not “look” realistic, they are arguably truer to life for the fluid, “impressionist” means used to evoke and embody their subjects. Turner’s Burning of the House of Parliament is far more effective an apocalyptic canvas for being blurred—the colors literally bleeding from one part of the canvas to the next—than a “realist” portrait of the destructive flames over the Thames. By embodying—enacting, performing, being—the affect, the overall effect is more immediate and more authentic than were said affect merely expressed via “natural” or “realistic” depiction.
Paradoxically, impressionism is therefore more realistic than realism.
I believe with all my heart that music remains for all time the finest means of expression we have...It would be enough if music could make people listen…
Debussy's first orchestral masterpiece, the "Prelude to the afternoon of a faun" certainly made people listen. And started a literal sea-change in music by presaging its composers journey towards defining not only a style (impressionism) or a school (Debussyism) but creating a wave whose force--if imperceptible from outside--continues to affect and influence composers. His keen attentiveness to painting and poetry played no small part in this process.
He described music "as a dream from which the veils have been lifted." He alluded to this quality, and tellingly, the means he would employ from the "Prelude" forward to get to the essence of his expressive music--by creating impressions.
...is it perhaps the dream left over at the bottom of the faun’s flute?
To be more precise, it is the general impression of the poem
The birth of "musical impressionism" would not have been possible had its progenitor, Debussy, not had something against which to react. That something was the behemoth of Wagnerian music drama. I mused on Wagner in August while in residence at the Bard Music Festival. Critics of Wagner (and Debussy was certainly one, AFTER he exorcised the huge sway Wagner held over him early in his career) dismiss his hyper-emotional music as representational, merely descriptive and emotionally manipulative. While this is a gross oversimplification, the thread from Wagnerian leitmotif to B+ Hollywood film music is a clearer one than Wagnerians might like to admit.
And though Wagner often set mythical &/or supernatural subjects in his operas, he sought to write music that expressed real emotion. Such representational art has an agenda via the manipulativeness of a prescribed result or affect—via realistic description the listener/viewer is meant to feel a specific emotion the artist has sought to express. (The prelude to Tristan und Isolde is meant to express the unquenchable desire of the protagonists, simply put. Wagner’s “unending melody” is employed to achieve that specific, affective—and manipulative— end).
The painters associated with impressionism--and others on the outside of the movement, Turner & Whistler chief among them--attempted to get at the essence of an image or even more fundamentally, to get at the essence of color and light by capturing impressions of their subjects and attempting to depict a moment in time.
Debussy described music as “rhythmicized time” and one could say impressionist art is time represented (on canvas): the viscous flow of blurred images is analogous to time’s perpetual motion.
In these paintings the blurred textures give the canvases a fluid sense of motion—even the still lifes are not still! And if not in motion, they appear to have a presence (their essence?) that is multi-dimensional.
Of the essences of color and light, Debussy connected his impressionist Nocturnes to Whistler's studies of the same name:
It’s an experiment in finding the different combinations possible inside a single color, as a painter might make a study in grey, for example...
To me, this is the essential--in every sense--difference between Wagnerian realism and Debussy's impressionism.
By experimenting with those combinations that turned "rhythmicized time" into "impressions" of a poem or a color or a landscape, Debussy wrote music that was
not even the expression of feeling; it’s the feeling itself.
For Debussy the essence of such art was not easily achieved. His advice to budding artists is valuable regardless of what style or school one follows.
Time spent carefully creating the atmosphere in which a work of art must move is never wasted…one must never be in a hurry to write things down. One must allow the complex play of ideas free rein.
Elsewhere, with typical ironic detachment, he hits on another essential difference that gets at the distance between the objective realism of impressionism versus the subjective emotionalism of much realistic art.
…memory is a superior faculty, because you can pick from it the emotions you need.
Still more good advice for the young composer/painter/poet (and it is no coincidence that Debussy's advice is applicable to each genre--I have found the more I appreciate the paintings and the poetry from Debussy's circles, the more I appreciate the music. I believe the same could be said from any angle of this artistic triangle.)
…find the perfect expression for an idea and add only as much decoration as is absolutely necessary…
Though artists from Turner to Cezanne to Monet (and beyond) do not “look” realistic, they are arguably truer to life for the fluid, “impressionist” means used to evoke and embody their subjects. Turner’s Burning of the House of Parliament is far more effective an apocalyptic canvas for being blurred—the colors literally bleeding from one part of the canvas to the next—than a “realist” portrait of the destructive flames over the Thames. By embodying—enacting, performing, being—the affect, the overall effect is more immediate and more authentic than were said affect merely expressed via “natural” or “realistic” depiction.
Paradoxically, impressionism is therefore more realistic than realism.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
"It would be enough if music could make people listen."
As the leader of a non-profit arts organization, the "state of the arts" is an omnipresent concern. The Virginia Chorale is set to kick off its 26th season with a program entitled Sing in the Seasons. I've already posted the program notes for this concert. Last month I wrote a book review of Why Classical Music Still Matters. If that seems like a non sequitir, making connections is one of my raisons d'etre.
This week a colleague forwarded a link to a new Kennedy Center initiative called Arts in Crisis. www.artsincrisis.org
This "is a program designed to provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States." And make no mistake about it, arts organizations throughout the US are struggling more than ever. I just started reading a book that's been on my list since I first learned of it, by the president of the Kennedy Center, Michael Kaiser. The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations is a blueprint for how non-profits can rethink, revise, and restructure in order to turn things around. His mission-focused agenda is full of practical advice. This advice is supported by case studies of the major organizations he has helped turnaround in the past 20 years: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Kansas City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and London's flagship opera company at Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House.
Kaiser's mantra is "good art marketed well." I know our organization is fulfilling the "good art" half of that equation. It is increasingly challenging in today's world, however, for smaller organizations to be the visible presence necessary to garner the attention and support required for the successful turnaround.
The Chorale was recently told by one of the (lamentably few) major corporations in the region that we're simply not big enough. "Not enough bang for the buck" was the reason we were denied sponsorship by a company that supports our big brother organizations like the Opera and the Symphony.
While a cappella choral music may be among the most rarified of classical music genres, it is no less relevant, no less vital, no less current & important than any of the omnibus genres that require larger stages & ensembles (and audiences). I would argue, moreover, that the meeting of poetry and music sung by a group of human voices in harmony is sui generis and thus the specialized nature of a cappella choral music is a singular and defining virtue.
One of the defining virtues of classical music in general is its ability to transcend specificity and be relevant across time and space. Our opening concert features a variety of settings of Shakespeare. One of his love poems features the line "When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed." This 400-year-old poem inspired a contemporary response by the American composer Dominick Argento. His setting of Sonnet LXIV is a gripping, haunting, and moving elegy for 9/11.
Though it seems to pass with less ado with each successive year, 9/11 is a case study of why classical music will always matter. The most meaningful expressions of the emotions associated with such tragedy--grief, sorrow, anger, confusion, lament--are best expressed via the arts. And no form more than music gives life to such expression. I would argue that choral music in particular is best fit for performing, enacting, and embodying such expression. In the aftermath of September 11th, and in the anniversaries since, the major works most often performed in commemoration have been Beethoven's 9th (choral) symphony and the Requiem settings of Mozart & Brahms .
Our fall concert is framed by two classic standards from the American songbook. Autumn Leaves and Summertime are two great ballads that happen to be the work of Jewish composers. The first example, made famous in this country by Johnny Mercer's lyrics, is a song of the Hungarian composer Joseph Kosma, who fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933. Earlier tonight I read a review in this week's New Yorker of Dancing in the Dark, a survey of art from the Depression-era thirties. While it did not mention the Gershwin brothers' ground-breaking work of musical theater, Porgy and Bess, it is worth noting that this operatic musical appeared in the same period.
Victor Hugo said "music expresses that which cannot be said and cannot be suppressed."
The subject heading of this post is a quote from one of Claude Debussy's letters. His Trois Chansons (Three songs) are at the center of a program of great music inspired by the seasons of the year. 17 of the finest singers in the Commonwealth will be singing that program next weekend. There is not another group like ours in Virginia. And there is no better way to experience the wealth and immeasurable variety of such expression than by participating in a concert of live music.
Come. Hear. Outstanding. Rewarding. Artists. Listen. Engage.
We hope you'll come hear what we're up to Oct 2-4.
This week a colleague forwarded a link to a new Kennedy Center initiative called Arts in Crisis. www.artsincrisis.org
This "is a program designed to provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States." And make no mistake about it, arts organizations throughout the US are struggling more than ever. I just started reading a book that's been on my list since I first learned of it, by the president of the Kennedy Center, Michael Kaiser. The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations is a blueprint for how non-profits can rethink, revise, and restructure in order to turn things around. His mission-focused agenda is full of practical advice. This advice is supported by case studies of the major organizations he has helped turnaround in the past 20 years: the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Kansas City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and London's flagship opera company at Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House.
Kaiser's mantra is "good art marketed well." I know our organization is fulfilling the "good art" half of that equation. It is increasingly challenging in today's world, however, for smaller organizations to be the visible presence necessary to garner the attention and support required for the successful turnaround.
The Chorale was recently told by one of the (lamentably few) major corporations in the region that we're simply not big enough. "Not enough bang for the buck" was the reason we were denied sponsorship by a company that supports our big brother organizations like the Opera and the Symphony.
While a cappella choral music may be among the most rarified of classical music genres, it is no less relevant, no less vital, no less current & important than any of the omnibus genres that require larger stages & ensembles (and audiences). I would argue, moreover, that the meeting of poetry and music sung by a group of human voices in harmony is sui generis and thus the specialized nature of a cappella choral music is a singular and defining virtue.
One of the defining virtues of classical music in general is its ability to transcend specificity and be relevant across time and space. Our opening concert features a variety of settings of Shakespeare. One of his love poems features the line "When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed." This 400-year-old poem inspired a contemporary response by the American composer Dominick Argento. His setting of Sonnet LXIV is a gripping, haunting, and moving elegy for 9/11.
Though it seems to pass with less ado with each successive year, 9/11 is a case study of why classical music will always matter. The most meaningful expressions of the emotions associated with such tragedy--grief, sorrow, anger, confusion, lament--are best expressed via the arts. And no form more than music gives life to such expression. I would argue that choral music in particular is best fit for performing, enacting, and embodying such expression. In the aftermath of September 11th, and in the anniversaries since, the major works most often performed in commemoration have been Beethoven's 9th (choral) symphony and the Requiem settings of Mozart & Brahms .
Our fall concert is framed by two classic standards from the American songbook. Autumn Leaves and Summertime are two great ballads that happen to be the work of Jewish composers. The first example, made famous in this country by Johnny Mercer's lyrics, is a song of the Hungarian composer Joseph Kosma, who fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933. Earlier tonight I read a review in this week's New Yorker of Dancing in the Dark, a survey of art from the Depression-era thirties. While it did not mention the Gershwin brothers' ground-breaking work of musical theater, Porgy and Bess, it is worth noting that this operatic musical appeared in the same period.
Victor Hugo said "music expresses that which cannot be said and cannot be suppressed."
The subject heading of this post is a quote from one of Claude Debussy's letters. His Trois Chansons (Three songs) are at the center of a program of great music inspired by the seasons of the year. 17 of the finest singers in the Commonwealth will be singing that program next weekend. There is not another group like ours in Virginia. And there is no better way to experience the wealth and immeasurable variety of such expression than by participating in a concert of live music.
Come. Hear. Outstanding. Rewarding. Artists. Listen. Engage.
We hope you'll come hear what we're up to Oct 2-4.
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